I received my alma mater's quarterly paper today and was once again struck by the death of someone I knew. To me, that's the most reliable element of this newspaper showing up in my mailbox--that someone has died, and it's here to tell me the news.
Every life is significant and every soul is made just as much in the image of God as the one before, but not everyone touches your life the same, or means the same to you personally. Most of these obituaries are of people I knew for a season, and not very well. This month, it was the college president from my days as a student, while last issue it was the mother of a girl I dated a few times--reading their stories are times of somber reflection for me, as I reflect on how pain will mark itself on their survivors.
It is also interesting how your memory of the recently departed tends to warp into an all-seeing/all-knowing past where you remember the person as if their life was always marked for death. This is akin to seeing images of John Lennon, now that you know what happened to him. You see him full of life in an interview or a performance, and realize that he has no clue that he's going to die in 1980. Sadly, I can't help but picture these people that I knew, the same way in my remembrances.
It also makes me realize the shadow of death that hangs over me. It is so hard to fathom that my days are numbered. Besides feeling a little beaten down at times, I feel about the same as I did 12 or 15 years ago. But my children keep growing taller, and their speech improves, and they are all learning to wipe themselves... so I know that it won't be long before they're wiping my behind for me. Turnabout is fair play, afterall.
Thank God there's a Heaven. And thank God I can know it's open for me--because of my belief in Jesus and his perfect life, death, and resurrection to pay for my sin. It's surprising how many people don't believe in the afterlife anymore. I read a piece in Entertainment Weekly a month or so ago about some young musician I'd never heard of who died unexpectedly on the afternoon he was planning a big party. He got tired, laid in bed for a nap, and never woke up. His buds arrived for the party, and found him dead. But according to this story, they were all fine with it. Saying, in effect, that he simply expired.
Perhaps that's the worst trend of all--not thinking a lick about the true ever after, by buying into the slogan that forever is now--and the immediate future. Think about all the ways we say it: Best Friends Forever, A Diamond is Forever, and "I'll love you forever." There's even a "Pringles" commercial set to the song "Everlasting Love"--catchy, but not quite realistic.
We've cheapened forever and transformed it into the shadow of an unknown future--that rarely allows us 100 years.
Beautiful work. I really enjoyed this piece.
Posted by: Aaron Bowdoin | June 30, 2006 at 08:13 AM